Weekend Warrior- NOT!

Many people think that the National Guard soldiers are just weekend warriors, meaning they just serve one weekend a month and that is it. My honey has spent many times a month doing some training, a 5-day drill where he can’t come home at night, or gotten deployed to hurricane duty. The Guard is utilized heavily for all US disasters. Very little people know that they actually helped defend the US in WW2. During Hurricane Katrina, those Guard members unluckily stationed in New Orleans got shot at by some gang members who did not want to be evacuated during the flooding. They were not armed to protect themselves, which was very frustrating to the soldiers and to the family members that had to worry about their safety.

Well, after the first deployment, CSF had about a year to catch up at his regular career. He only got to spend maybe 5 months at it before he was recruited into another mission to train for. Even though he was in the US, and no more than 30 minutes from me, he was unavailable to us. Not a big deal, by then we were used to it and in my opinion, once you deal with a deployment in a war zone, being apart in the US is not a big blip on the radar. Sure, you get lonely and miss the guy, but you aren’t worried he is going to get blown to bits on a convoy. Kind of like when I took him to buy his cruiser when he returned from Iraq. My friends at work asked,”Aren’t you scared of him getting killed on that bike?” I said,”Once you deal with a soldier in a war zone where people are shooting at him every day, a motorcycle seems so benign.”

So… after the 6 months of school he went to, he wasn’t able to be released from his one unit to the other to go to Afghanistan with his friends. People he has fought with in Iraq, people he has trained day in and day out with that he trusts with his life. He was to remain with his main unit. Well, ironically, about 2 months later he gets notified that he is to go and get deployed with a different unit entirely, and this time using the skills he does in his civilian life. In fact it was his degree that got him recruited. So this came from the big wigs up high, and superseded the management at his unit. He had to go. Managerial pissing match lost!

It was comical. Kind of. In his mind it was a toss-up if it was better to request to get deployed with his team-mates and do the deployment in Afghanistan, or take his chances and possibly go to Iraq again with his main unit. He would be stuck there longer and with new people he hasn’t trained with. Fate intervened and he got to be deployed in Afghanistan on a different mission, however it turned out his friends were not too far from where he was.